June 27, 2016
In 2014, Waitsfield and Champlain Valley Telecom (WCVT; Waitsfield, Vt.) earned a Showcase Award in the NTCA Smart Rural Community® SRC) program. In 2015, WCVT secured an SRC Collaboration Challenge grant, which matched community funding for a free downtown Wi-Fi network. Kurt Gruendling, WCVT vice president of marketing and business development, shared with me the inspiration for the network and how it has changed WCVT and its communities.
JS: What sparked the idea to create a free downtown Wi-Fi network?
KG: We saw an opportunity to expand high-speed access outside the home. Our high-speed service to residential and commercial customers is great, but we wanted to extend the mobility outside of the home and enhance the perceived value of our services by offering a community Wi-Fi
JS: What type of tourist industry do WCVT communities enjoy?
KG: We serve four ski areas, three large ones and a small one so we do rely significantly on outdoor related tourism. Our communities also attract a lot of “leaf peepers” for fall foliage, and mountain biking in the non-winter. The Champlain Valley territory that we acquired in 1994 from GTE has a strong summer focus, with a lot of summer homes and seasonal camps located along beautiful Lake Champlain.
JS: What sort of businesses and activity support the downtown area on a regular basis?
KG: The Mad River Valley is composed of four towns; the SRC grant focused specifically on two towns in the Mad River Valley, and has since been deployed to an additional community in the Champlain Valley. We replicated the Mad River Valley deployment in Bristol, Vermont, which has a pretty condensed downtown. Our goal was to keep people in the downtown shopping areas. The Warren Store is a quintessential Vermont country store and has an outdoor deck overlooking the river, and if people can grab a sandwich, take a seat on the deck overlooking the river, and get on-line, we suspected they would visit longer. In Waitsfield, we have the Mad River Green, which features a lot of small businesses, including a farmer’s market on Saturdays and service as a public gathering space. To simplify installation, we mounted a wireless access point on a gazebo on the green that already had a power drop, and then just added a fiber-optic drop. We also have Wi-Fi access in the visitor center at the Mad River Valley Chamber of Commerce and we are currently in the process of turning up service near a gathering spot on the Mad River where people swim adjacent to a covered bridge. This is an area that also hosts outdoor public gatherings for arts and entertainment that attract locals and visitors alike.
JS: How did WCVT recruit interest in building the network?
KG: It’s hard to be against community WiFi. Conceptually, everyone agrees with it. We are active in our local Chambers of Commerce, and did not find a lot of challenges to the concept. VickeryHill is a local web development company that helped us with a lot of the back-end development and assisted with the front-end portal design work for us, including the log-in screen and terms and conditions. People who utilize the Wi-FI network can become automatically enrolled for future communications from the local Chamber of Commerce, which extends the benefits and provides a great way to stay connected with the community.
JS: How long did it take to build the network once the grant was received?
KG: It was a pretty quick process. We used Ruckus equipment, and once they learned that we were using this for community WiFi, the process got even easier. The biggest challenges we faced involved bringing fiber to some of the locations. We actually came in under budget.
JS: What benefits of this project can you identify?
KG: Several. If nothing else, it was a learning experience for WCVT as a service provider. WiFI is a critical aspect of the consumer experience; in fact, we find that about half of the support calls we receive are ultimately related to Wi-Fi, even if the complaint did not begin that way. Service providers must become experts in this field, learning to work with different vendors and equipment, for example. Supporting a high-capacity network forced us to become proficient in everything WiFi.
We had concerns when we secured the grant, because at that time we were not yet experts. We thought, “What if we build this, and no one uses it? Our name is on this project, so it better work out well!”
And, it did. We now offer a business-class WiFi product that is critical to small businesses, and it is growing every week, adding customers and access points. We like to call it plug, play, and walk away. We walked in with a lack of experience in building high-density access, but leaned on a fantastic vendor who helped us spec equipment. With our managed business class Wi-Fi solution, we now have many customers including inn’s, B&B’s, small businesses, police departments, town offices, and fire departments – we offer hosted PBX and managed business class products.
Our community citizens benefit from the downtown access, both from using the network but also from reaping the benefits of tourists who use it and stay longer; WCVT benefitted by sharpening our skills and offerings; and our customers benefit as the experience we gained implementing SRC grant enabled us to expand the offerings we provide to them.
